Greater Minds
by An Preson Peepul
Summary: Summary: A paranoid person might have said new was bad, but when you've lived the same life for over a thousand years, you'd welcome any sort of excitement you could get.


_"Okay, Conroy! Let's start working. It's going to be a long road!"_

_"god help me."_

_*5 minutes later*_

_"Phew, we did it! That was fast. Wow, I underestimated my enthusiasm."_

_"I'm dying."_

~Gunter and Conroy, We Have a Problem

(This basically sums up me working on this)

* * *

Time travel was not the most consistent thing. It was one of the few quirks that irked Robin whenever she went back, but hey, she had to take what she got.

They were never big things, never anything that really changed what happened. Those changes never occurred without her influence. Sometimes Miriel was a traveling scholar. Other times, Olivia was the Grimleal slave they ran across on their way to the heart of Plegia, or Stahl joined without a brother. Once or twice, sweet little Lucina had turned out as sweet little Lucius.

Those were just the really big changes, though. Most of the time the changes were so small, Robin never bothered to find out what they were. Even when she noticed it, the people affected never changed with it. Olivia was always a stuttering mess. Miriel was always analytical to a fault. Stahl was always unassertive and timid. Lucina was always an adorable child.

Different place, same person. Even with those slight deviations, nothing ever surprised her.

Which was why she found this new addition rather curious.

The man arrived on a clear autumn day, seeking shelter from a storm, or so he claimed. Chrom, never one to turn away a traveler, accepted him into the ranks. With flowing white hair and piercing red eyes, Robin had never seen anyone like this man in any of the previous timelines. His clothes were unlike anything she had seen across Ylisse, Plegia, Valm, or anywhere else. The armor he wore, made up of rounded white plates, evoked a regal feel, yet the crest stamped on it was not from any royal family she knew of. And his sword, or rather, the hilt of it, shimmered in a strange, orange light. A single red gemstone decorated the otherwise plain handle, and despite the lack of a cutting edge, it had a strange air of power to it.

Most interesting were his eyes. They were crimson, a striking enough feature as it was, and yet they seemed dull. Whenever the man reacted to anything, they never snapped on; they just lazily floated over to whatever startled him. Nothing seemed to surprise him either. Like her, he was done with the world.

That was why she sought him out tonight; for like-minded company. She found him standing in the middle of a hallway, all alone. He stared off into the sky, as if reminiscing about something out in the vast reaches of space.

Robin was usually never the one to make the first move. With how the man was distracted by a cloud in the sky, however, she felt that she would have to wait another life's worth if she wanted him to talk to her.

"You."

The man turned his head to her. "Me."

Robin stared. He stared back, raising an eyebrow.

Finally, she said, "You have lost someone."

The eyebrow remained where it was. "And?"

"A great many someones."

The man scoffed. "Don't you have a march to plan, miss tactician?"

"Hardly. Unlike my counterpart, I consider myself an expert on more than just tactics. Besides, he is the tactician of this army, not I. He simply lends an ear to what I have to say from time to time."

"By time to time, you mean most of the time."

This time, Robin broke her gaze to roll her eyes. "He is young and foolish, not to mention he has forgotten much of what he has learned."

The man's jaw snapped shut. He looked Robin up and down.

"You don't look much older than him," he said.

"As do you. And yet you act as if you are old enough to hold a candle to the dragons." Robin crossed her arms, but it looked more as if she were hugging them to her chest.

A scowl crossed his face. His right eye twitched, as if she hit some sort of nerve.

He shook his head, and it was gone before she could figure out what it was for. Normally she was faster at noting down those little things people did. Then again, normally meant she could not speak with someone new. Like this man.

"Why are you so interested?"

"Because you're like me."

The man gave her a flat stare. Something that might have been contempt flickered in his eyes. He let out a chuckle, a dry and humorless sound. If it had been a laugh, she might have been unsettled, but people like them, they weren't ones to laugh.

"I don't mean to pronounce to corpse dead," he said, "but you're surrounded by people who love you. That's kind of hard to believe."

He tipped his head towards her; an attempt at a polite gesture, if she'd ever seen one. With that, he turned around and walked away.

Chasing after him would have made her seem desperate. So she didn't, and she watched as he grew smaller down the hall, wandering off to who knows where. Maybe if she'd met him before, she would have known the right thing to make him stay.

To his disappearing form, she said, "Really shows how much you know."

* * *

Robin knew the Shepherds inside out, least of all because slept with almost half of them before. If Sumia ever caught wind of that, she would probably insist that Robin stick with the one, spouting some mumbo-jumbo about true love from one of her romance novels. Truth be told, she had believed that as well for her first few lives, but she had all the time in the world, so it was bound to get a little old.

That was just the first few years, though. Romance lost its luster after, what, a dozen? A dozen-hundred years? The excitement of spending every day of the next few years was impossible to maintain if you could predict how what they would say to you and recite word-for-word how they would say it. She couldn't even remember the last time she'd worn a ring.

That was exactly why she kept seeking him out. Not out of some romantic attraction, but because she was curious. If she were paranoid, she might have done this out of caution. She just wanted to see who this anomaly was, especially since this might be her only chance to do something new.

This time, she found him standing in the training yard. The training dummies lined up around the clearing were untouched. The practice swords leaning on the wall exactly where they always were. As for the man himself, he was engaged in a conversation with Anna. At least, one of them was, anyway.

Anna waved her hands around as she spoke in her usual, animated way of speaking when she saw an opportunity to make money. The man, on the other hand, stared over her head. Robin, arriving just in time to catch the end of the conversation, decided to stay on the edge to see how it unfolded.

"Are you sure you don't want to sell it?" Anna said, pointing to the hilt strapped to the man's waist. "Those unusual metals could be worth a lot of money."

"I'm afraid that is exactly why I can not give it to you," he replied. "Perhaps if you could... say, steal the Fire Emblem for me, I'd consider it."

"Are you implying something?" Anna leaned closer, narrowing her eyes. From the shadows, Robin almost felt sorry for the man, having to deal with the merchant when she was like this. Once she wanted to get her hands on something, it was hard to pry her off.

"Hm?"

"Are you calling me a thief? I'm a locksmith, buddy. Lock. Smith. There's a difference."

"My apologies, then. I didn't know you would take offense to that."

Anna shook her head, her ponytail swinging behind her. "My forgiveness has to be bought. Maybe I'll let you off if you sell me your sword."

"I never said it was a bad thing to be a thief," the man said, raising his hands. "I've been friends with thieves, and I'd have been happy to give my sword to them."

"So am I a friend, then?"

The man shook his head. "I'm just saying, I won't give up my sword for anything else than a fair trade."

Anna smirked. "Tough luck, then." She turned away and walked out, calling over her shoulder, "I'll make you change your mind, buster."

As she disappeared around a corner, Robin stepped into the light. She could tell the man sensed her approach from the way his shoulders suddenly stiffened. It seems he wasn't willing to open up just yet.

"What does that sword mean to you?" she asked before he could get a word in.

"What do you mean?" he asked back.

"It has no blade, so it's useless. You could have sold it for money, but you didn't. You have no reason to hold onto it unless it has some sort of sentimental value."

The man gave a hum, but didn't reply otherwise.

"Who did you lose? A friend? A mentor? A lover?"

"Who said I've lost anyone?"

"I asked before. You neither confirmed nor denied it."

"Well, I might be denying it now."

Robin huffed. "Then I'm afraid I can't help you."

"Help me?" A confused look spread across his face. "Why do you think I need help?"

"The way your eyes keep straying to the heavens." She pointed up to the open sky over the training yard. "At first, I thought it was reminiscence, but that's not it, isn't it? There's something among the stars that you want, and I can help."

"By helping me overcome my grief. I don't need that, and even if I did, you wouldn't understand."

"And why would you think that?"

"You're too comfortable with everyone here. Maybe you did lose someone, but it's been so long since it's mattered."

This time, it was Robin's turn to smile. "I think you'll find there's more to me than that."

She raised her palm. The man, confused, glanced down at it. Robin gave a deep breath, and as she exhaled, raw, dark magic streamed out of her fingertips. It swirled together, pooling into a flickering, unstable, purple flame. It pulsed with an unusual power, shooting off white sparks in every direction.

When the man saw this, he visibly flinched. He looked surprised on the surface. As she saw the flames dance in his eyes, however, she thought she saw something else too.

With a snap of her fingers, she extinguished the dark energy in her hand. "Come to my room tonight if you're interested," she said. Then she turned back, and walked away, leaving the man with an unspoken question in the air.

* * *

The next time she saw the man was in her room. She was straightening the sheets on her bed when she heard a knock on her door. Her gaze slipped to the window, out into the empty dark space beyond, a single shade of black painted over behind the moon against the candlelight in her room. With a sigh, she put down her bedsheets and moved to the door.

When she pulled it aside, she came face to face with two glaring red orbs. The man's face was more steeled than usual; maybe their previous exchange had rubbed him the wrong way. She didn't know.

"So you came," Robin said, nodding.

The man didn't respond, pushing her aside as he walked into the room. Keeping an eye on him as he paced around the room, Robin closed the door. The man went straight to the window, much to her confusion. He stayed silent, at first. It was only a few moments, but it felt longer; kind of strange, considering she'd seen what eternity looked like.

When he spoke, his words were even stranger. "Do you remember the stars?"

"The stars?"

"I remember when the skies were more than just... this black, empty... space."

"Empty..." Robin's mind stuttered. "Stars" was just a word she threw around. It had always been there, right?

But... when was the last time she had seen the stars? Just a few seconds ago, she'd been looking out into the night sky. The empty night sky, with only the moon illuminating the planet's surface.

She looked back on her past life. Past all the deaths of her friends, past the sight of Grima looming over her, she tried to recall how the night had looked like. Sure enough, it was devoid of any stars. She went back ten lives, but there were no stars there, either.

Ten became a hundred, then several hundred. She found herself on a desperate search through all of her past lives, flipping through them like pages in a book, stumbling down memory lane. As she went further and further into her past, her memory started to fade. The fine details began to slip away, leaving her only with vague outlines, but even by the first five hundred years of her life, that too was gone. As far as she could remember, she had never seen the stars in the sky.

A thunderclap broke her out of her thoughts, so loud that her curtains rippled. Funny, she could have sworn the sky was clear tonight.

Then the man turned around, the handle of his sword gripped in both his hands. Only, it was no longer just a handle; sparks of electricity ran down a long, orange blade, weaving through the spines branching off it. When she saw the tip of the sword pointed at her, her arms flew up, dark magic flaring up between her fingers.

Through her senses, enhanced by countless years of combat, she could feel the power radiating off the sword. No normal enchantment could produce the overwhelming amount of energy she felt flowing through that blade. Even compared to the Fell Dragon's magic, this man was very powerful.

"Who do you serve?" he hissed through clenched teeth. "The Great King of Evil? Or the Demon King?"

"The King of... what?"

The man lowered his sword a little. "Grima, then?"

Robin's face hardened. "What? No!"

Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say. The man's sword was back on her in an instant. "Who, then?"

"I am my own master."

The man's eyes crackled with a sudden rush of fury. "I've only seen four with that kind of raw dark magic. You couldn't have nursed it on your own. Besides, I don't know who you are, but you know who I am."

"Actually, I don't."

The man looked uncertain. It was jarring to see the expression on his face, however brief it might have been. He shook his head.

"No. You–you know things. Out of everyone else, why did you invite me here?"

"Can't I be interested in a new face?"

The man shook his head again. "I'm not blind. I can see how disinterested you are with everyone else. I mean, everyone else loves you, so I thought I was missing a piece of the puzzle, but that wasn't it. People like you... of course you won't be interested in them, right?"

"I... no, you're right."

The man scowled, revealing his teeth. "What do you want from me, then?"

"I said I wanted to help you. That offer still stands," Robin said, letting her shoulders fall a fraction of an inch. She still kept her eyes on the man, however.

Something sparked inside his eyes. They snapped left, then right, like he was warring with himself. Robin kept a good distance away, ready to incinerate him with dark magic if he made to attack, although she doubted she could even if she tried.

Finally, his sword dropped, the tip pointing to the floor. He let out a long sigh, blowing air from his lips in an overt fashion as he let himself fall on the bed behind him. Seeing that he was not going to attack, Robin disarmed herself as well, closing her hands and extinguishing the purple flames. She joined him on her bed, sitting down beside him. He barely reacted, his eyes fixed on the wall across from him.

Neither of them spoke. The tension between them had disappeared as soon as it had appeared, so it made sense that they both needed time to cool down.

In the silence, Robin took a moment to mull over a few new revelations. It seemed this man was a lot more complex than she had thought. With her blood tainted by the Fell Dragon, she knew she was incredibly powerful. The man beside her had proved himself nearly as powerful, if not as powerful, as her.

Her eyes wandered to her left, where the man was sitting. Since she no longer had the threat of a sword hanging over her, she noticed the gleam of sweat on his forehead. The confrontation had taken a lot out of him. She looked down at her own hands and found them unsteady. A lot out of both of them, it seemed.

She thought back to his words, specifically two things he'd offhandedly mentioned: The Great King of Evil and the Demon King. For all this man's power, he appeared terrified when he mentioned them. Gods, he'd been relieved at the possibility of her being a servant of Grima. The fact that she didn't know who either of them was worried her.

"The Great King of Evil, the Demon King; who are they?" she asked.

"You don't know who they are?"

"No." Whenever she went back, she always ended up just before the war against Plegia that started it all. If the Great King of Evil and the Demon King did anything before then, she would have only seen it in her first life, which was who knows how long ago.

"I'll tell you," he said, "but only if you tell me where your power comes from. Dark magic that strong only looks like that after thousands of years of practice."

Robin debated whether she could tell him the truth. She decided that there would be no harm in doing so, since this would probably be her only chance to for something new, something different.

"Tell me, what do you think of time travel?"

* * *

As the morning light seeped in through the windows, the singing of the birds filtered into her ears.

Robin had never noticed how cheerful they sounded whenever they sang.

As she opened her eyes, letting the soft sunlight seep through, a small smile stretched across her lips. A strange warmth blossomed in her breast. She felt her chest rise and fall, watched as her sheets piled up.

Robin opened her mouth and let out a yawn. She stretched her arms, and for once, they didn't burn. With strands of hair in her face, normally so neat and tidy, she looked over the ruffled bedsheets, bunched up in certain places, thrown off in others. As she pulled back her hair into her usual twin ponytails, her eyes fell to the spot beside her. It was empty, the covers lying open in the vague impression of a body.

He'd left, just as he said he would. That didn't stop a twinge of sadness from passing through her. She'd seen her friends die over and over and barely shed a tear. This was a one of a kind encounter, however. She could see her friends again after they died, but she might never see him again.

Robin hummed, and her moment of melancholy passed. He wouldn't want her to mope around because of him. He'd said as much the night before. They wanted to end their encounter with nothing they needed to come back to, and she wasn't about to ruin it for them.

As she slipped her undershirt over her wiry form, she recalled everything that had happened the previous night. She'd told him her past, he told her his. They found they had much in common, and they started talking about all that had gone wrong with their lives. One thing led to another, and, well, she couldn't say she regretted what happened next.

He was nothing but driven, that was for sure. He had a firm goal, as well as a reason to believe in that goal, and he would do anything to reach it. That reminded her of herself, but when she leaned back to examine herself a bit more, it was quite different. She had a goal, but as for her reasons for pursuing it? She wasn't sure what those were since it had been so long.

Maybe she could find another one.

Slowly, she rose out of her bed, the frame shuffling as a weight was lifted from it. A breeze snaked through the open window, sweeping around the room. Caught up in the wind, Robin shivered as it passed through the thin fabric. It came, and it left, leaving her standing still at the center of her room, just a little bit cold.

Robin scanned the room, when a glint on her desk caught her eye. Carefully, she walked towards it and leaned over, curious to see what it was.

A golden hilt lay across the wood, the bright red gemstone glowing in the morning sun. The blade was gone, rendering the piece a simple paperweight for the letter beneath it. It seemed he still wanted to say farewell, if only to give her some closure.

Carefully, she picked up the handle and tucked it away in one of the pockets on the robe draped over her chair. Now that she knew what it could do, perhaps it could come in handy somewhere down the line, even if she was too weak to wield it herself. With that out of the way, she took the letter in her hands and opened it.

It read:

_"Maybe in another life, miss tactician._

_~Corrin"_

A badge was proudly displayed just below his signature, with two lines crossing over it.

Heh. Wasn't that a thought?

Robin's lips turned upward. _Maybe in another life,_ she thought, closing the letter again. _Until then, I'll look forward to seeing you again._

* * *

**I seem to be getting really attached to this version of Robin that I've been building up. I probably won't write a full FE story for her (I'm saving this Robin for a bigger story), but in the meanwhile, I'll probably write more snippets like this in-between big projects.**

**Turns out I can be really prolific if I feel passionate about something. Who would've guessed?**

**Anyway, the connections to "that other story" are a bit more obvious than usual, though I really hope it didn't get in the way of your enjoyment. I might have a completely disconnected bigger Fire Emblem story coming up, so I'm looking forward to that. Leave a review if you can spare a few seconds to do so. It really helps keep me going, and also if you can leave some constructive criticism, that'd be nice as well.**

**Cover art is mine, by the way.**


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